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The life of Simon
It may be that, in the main, we are deprived of other familiar human company on our travels, but we regularly indulge in a game of either assigning nationalities and national characteristics to people, or likening them to others. For example, our favourite at the moment is a man, perhaps in his forties, who is Adonis-like; handsome, square jawed, richly tanned and with an elegant mane of thick, blond hair. He oozes self assurance and each day he is immaculately turned out in different beach wear, sometimes twice a day. He is here with his wife and daughter, each of them quite beautiful in a Scandinavian way, blond plaits and quite perfect. We have dubbed him the Bounty Hunter after the American reality TV star we saw recently on Larry King Live, although Kaelene thinks that does him a disservice and prefers Fabio, the model.
Similarly, we meet people who are uncannily alike to people we know. A friend of Nicoles’ family, over from Tasmania for the wedding, is the splitting image of the father of one of Tim’s friends. But he didn’t just look like him; the way he talked, his mannerisms and even his interests were the same, and we struck up a good friendship made easier by the fact that he seemed so familiar. So too, on our boat trip to Phi Phi Island, there was a man who reminded us of the husband of well-know East Christchurch member of parliament. Again, it wasn’t just the physical appearance, but also in the way he carried himself and interacted with his group of friends. In this case, the similarity ended when, in a very Eastern European way, the man stripped for no apparent reason to a very unflattering, saggy pair of grey flannel Y-front underpants and remained that way for the remainder of the day.
Last night the tables were turned. Our bar has been colonised of late by some Australian couples who we hadn’t warmed to, one of each couple reminding us of disagreeable, former work colleagues. But it was our last night at the bar so we dropped our guard. As the conversation progressed, one of the men addressed Marty as Simon and his day was made by an affirmative response. Simon, it turns out, is a celebrity chef. Not that our man watches Simon’s cooking programme though, it just happens to be on Australian TV between AFL matches and he spotted the Simon in Marty immediately. It is hard to replay a conversation, but everything fell perfectly into place. Marty asked the man to respect his privacy on the basis of his need to have a quiet holiday, incognito, and said he didn’t like to talk shop but then gave carefully measured advice on local cuisine (expensive needn’t always be best, simple Thai meals at beachside cafes are right up there with the world’s best, and that it can be quite manly for Australian men to cook). Earlier, we had said we were travelling for a long time and that fitted too, the man understood that Simon was semi-retired these days.
A brilliant performance, and clear evidence that Kaelene is travelling with an unconscionable rogue, but we had no sympathy. Last seen our man was vigorously contesting the bar tab he had unwisely run up over the past few days, too much alcohol had clearly blurred his mind.